


amidst this darkness, in search of light

by CookieBlaze



Category: Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen
Genre: Eldritch space gods exist, Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies (Except the Bad Guys), Gardensverse, Gen, Post-Split
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 17:09:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20313046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CookieBlaze/pseuds/CookieBlaze
Summary: Shikako lands, with only days to figure out how to stop Jashin. Aoba just wants to know where Kumo is. Neither of them made plans for each other.





	amidst this darkness, in search of light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AislingRoisin (JayBird345)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayBird345/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Dreaming Of Sunshine](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/509923) by Silver Queen. 

> title from poem by anupom aryan

I landed in the Garden for the last time, wondering if I was the one who made it home. Usually, I would head toward Konoha first, to see where in the timeline I was, but there was no need to now. The Garden had already bloomed, which told me it was after Gelel. If I concentrated, there was a faint resonance between my necklace and the chakra in the air. Obviously, even though Gelel itself had dispersed, it still had enough awareness here, in the seat of its power.

With no pressing need to go to Konoha, I aimed towards the Land of Hot Springs, evading both Cloud's sentries and Konoha's patrols. There were a few troublesome monks I had to take care of, if they hadn't been already. Hopefully, the native Shikako had managed to foil their plans somehow. If not, I'd have to come up with something that wouldn't send me dimension hopping through the universe again.

Within days, I arrived at the city, the sun gleaming off the polished roofs. A quick glance unfortunately proved that Jashin's priests were still here. Another closer look and a few questions later, I had the date and quietly retreated back into the forest, mentally forming and discarding plans. I had less than three days to set something up, plenty of time to eliminate the priests if I wanted to. The problem with that was that Jashin was already pressing against the thin screen that separated us. The monks had been here too long, the chakra already having a distinct sense to it. Usually, either Gelel dropped me off earlier than this or the monks had been driven out of town, never being given the chance to take root.

I needed a seal, obviously. Not a seal like Naruto's, I had no desire to host Jashin. Not one like Orochimaru's either, I didn't want to spread its influence. Sadly, I was lacking in knowledge in how to seal a literal god of suffering.

A long night of brainstorming later, I had the rough sketches of a plan. Back then, chakra and willpower had worked. If I had the time, I would have gone to search for Naruto, who vastly outstripped me in both subjects. So, plan A was a no go, and plan B was still a work in progress.

I didn't necessarily have to seal it into a living container. It was possible to just seal it into a rock and toss it into the river. However, I knew better than that. That was how I had found Kisuke, after all. And if I could find it by chance, so could anyone else. I wasn't willing to risk it. Plan B joined plan A into the ditch.

Plan C hit me in the dark of the night, as the fire burnt low and the moon set. If Gelel had still had a presence in the Garden, was it possible that I could ask it to help me? Usually, Gelel scattered, using up all its energy to form the Garden. Obviously, something had changed, but with no easy way to find out, I set that mystery to the side.

As I concentrated, I could, very faintly, hear Gelel's tune from my necklace. Sinking my chakra in it, I drew more and more chakra from my reserves, in the hope that I could ask my question.

_ "?" _

_ "Will you help me?" _

_ "??" _

A rush of energy filled my body, turning me to shadow and back.

_ "No, I'm healthy, don't worry." _

A stream of scenes, showing sunlight, laughter, kids playing and running around.

_ "There's something I need your help on." _

I tried my best to convey the horror that was Jashin, how it snatched the life forces of the villagers, the sheer want for pain and suffering.

_ "..." _

An image of stars-and-shadow, Gelel-and-Shikako, galaxies forming, stars detonating, a hand outstretched.

Oh. Of course. It was silly that I needed to ask it. Gelel had always helped, had always indicated that if I needed it, all I had to do was go to the Dead Wastes. The only difference now was that it had kept more of its conscience after being released. For a moment, I felt foolish.

_ "I'm sorry for not thanking you. Thank you, really, for healing me, helping me find my way home, and everything else." _

It was an inadequate thanks, but Gelel accepted it anyway. It returned my chakra to me and I could feel the stone on my necklace vibrate as Gelel came with it, transforming me into shadow, without any need for me to feed chakra into it.

Settling down, I turned my attention to the brushes and ink I had laid out earlier. It was time to get started.

* * *

Aoba infiltrated the town in disguise, as a civilian. The citizens in the Land of Hot Springs were a little nervous around ninja currently, due to the tensions between Konoha and Kumo. Honestly, he didn’t, couldn’t, blame them. In the past, there had been incidents where a ninja had just completely exploded, both literally and figuratively. On their side, the incidents had been slowly going down since their current Hokage had implemented a new civilian system that had grown popular since the last war, a system where those that had trauma could talk to a medical professional. Unfortunately, the current staff was fairly small, and was really only taken advantage of by civilian-raised chunin and below. The jonin were too paranoid and most of them had some kind of support network in themselves.

Sliding past a merchant, Aoba moved closer to the open bar, where his contact was, also in disguise.

“Sake, with a side of sweet curry, please,” Aoba ordered.

The bartender glanced up and spoke, “We’re out of sweet, want the spicy instead?”

“No, I’d rather have the miso, the one with the carrots and bamboo,” Aoba replied.

The bartender paused and put up the cloth he was using to wipe down the table. With a gesture, he silently invited Aoba to sit down and ducked into the kitchen.

Moments later, his food and drink was served, with a slip of paper taped to the underside of the dish. Using the excuse of lifting up his bowl to disguise his movements, Aoba slipped the paper into his sleeves. After finishing and paying, he walked out of the bar and slipped into a nearby alley to read the message.

It wasn’t good news. Their spy in Kumo reported that a large scale operation was taking place and had marked the most likely places they would go. One of them was in Hot Spring, barely two hours away if he pushed it. The others were too far away for him to check out, so he rolled the missive and tucked it into a scroll. After he checked on the one nearby, Aoba could drop it off at the nearest outpost, where a bird would take it back to Konoha faster than he could run.

Upon arriving, Aoba heard bells ringing as the sun set. Quite frankly, he didn’t have time to rest, but if there was anyone keeping watch, they would be suspicious, wondering why a lone, well-dressed civilian wasn’t going to bed. Walking briskly to the inn, Aoba rented a room for the night, one he didn’t intend to use, and asked the innkeeper about the bells.

“Oh, those monks -if you haven’t seen them yet, trust me you will- they’ve been ringing them at dawn and dusk lately. Awfully convenient now, of course, but it used to be that they would ring them in the middle of the night. I’m glad they decided to change,” she explained.

With a nod, Aoba made a note to update the files they had to include a new section of the Fire Temple here. He couldn’t think of any other off the top of his head that used bells, though it was odd that they had rung them in the night. Perhaps he could ask Asuma when he went back? He had had a monk as a friend during his stint as the daimyo’s guard, so Asuma would probably know why that happened.

Reaching his room, Aoba locked the door behind him and waited for the sun to finish setting. Once night came, he slipped out, intent on finding out if Kumo had made a base.

Hours passed. By the time the bell rang, all he had found was old kunai and the marks of a small team of ninja passing through. The only place he hadn’t checked yet was the forest. Mind made up, Aoba greeted the innkeeper on his way out and made his way toward the forest.

The forest was refreshingly cool after a night in the muggy air of the city and the tiny paranoid ninja in him calmed down a little at the sight of trees. There were fewer birds than he remembered but it was entirely possible that they had flown off to catch their prey.

Leaning against the tree next to him, Aoba breathed in the fresh air and tried to refresh his mind. He had to keep a sharp head if he was searching for the enemy camp, without alerting them to the fact he was here. Right now, there was nobody here to see-

_ Kunai!  
_

Aoba immediately took to the tree and managed to dodge the explosion that came shortly afterward. Was it Kumo or a different hostile force? Why hadn’t he noticed them? Not important. He had to defeat them quickly, before they attracted too much attention.

_ Dodge. _

Throw kunai based on where it came from. A grunt to the left confirmed that he had managed to hit something even if he couldn’t see them. Aoba immediately moved closer, engaging the enemy in taijutsu, striking towards his stomach, where there were plenty of soft parts and no bones to hinder him.

The enemy moved back, opening his mouth to say something. Unfortunately for him, Aoba’s clone was already in position and struck, sunking his kunai into his back. For a moment, it looked like it was over, but then there were multiple shouts ringing out.

Aoba made the decision to not stick around and burst into crows. He had to get back and warn-

_ Reality stretching, cruel laughter echoing. His crows - the message - no _ ** _no_ ** _ NO _ ** _NONONONO _ ** _ \- _

Darkness.

* * *

I had to hurry. Devising a seal had taken longer than I thought it would, and by the time I was finished, Jashin’s presence had almost saturated the city.

Finding the temple was easy. This time, there weren’t any bodies on the ground. It looked like they were doing the ritual differently than what I had last experienced, which was good in the sense that I didn’t have to worry about rescuing anyone. I would have to modify the seal a little, to account for the new dimensions, but it wasn’t much of a problem.

Carefully, I snuck around the priests, pasting the seals in the corners of the room, on the ceiling, and on the priests clothes if I could. Then the hard part came, waiting for Jashin to try to come out. The seals were designed to craft a new cage for it, as the old one clearly had a loophole in it somewhere. Gelel and I would power the initial activation of it and then it would become self-sustaining, by drawing on the natural chakra around it in small increments. Since we were in Hot Springs, the lava itself would provide plenty of that, and there was a dragon vein not too far away if the lava ever ceased to flow. I double checked that Gelel was ready, and settled in on a ceiling beam to wait.

The priests came and went, bringing animals for slaughter, occasionally offering their own blood to Jashin. Whenever I could, I tagged more of them with the tags, carefully to remain unnoticed. It was almost time, I could tell by the way they were getting more and more excited. It seemed like they were dragging in the last sacrifice, something heavy sounding, probably another bull or -_ Aoba! _

There was - Why was - He had no _ reason _ to be here! I took a breath, then another when the first didn’t help.

_ “Gelel? Change of plans. We’re going to cut this a lot closer than I thought we would.” _

I entered shadow state and slipped down, merging with Aoba’s shadow, a new plan already half made. If shadows could convey killing intent, then they could convey other things as well, right? Briefly, I spared a moment to regret the I hadn’t tested it, but there was no time like the present for experimentation. At least this had no chance to literally blow up. Just figuratively.

_Wake up._ _You’re in danger. Wake up. You are literally going to die if you don’t. Wake up. Exploding tags, flying kunai, shuriken, your sunglasses being stolen, Gai-sensei’s training regime, WAKE UP!!_

Aoba stirred, slowly coming to conscious. Luckily, he hadn’t been tied to the post yet, but that was going to change any second. I tried to convey more urgency through his shadow and he finally, finally came fully awake.

* * *

He was being dragged. Aoba took stock of the situation, keeping his eyes firmly closed. His sunglasses were gone, which was a pity, but oddly enough, he still had his weapons. There was no way that Kumo would forget anything so basic, so Aoba tentatively assumed that an ally had found him. This was supported by the fact that he could sense a Nara nearby, the unique sensation of his body not quite in complete control of itself. Two civilians were dragging him, obviously unfit, and most likely unable to lift him completely. He wasn’t quite sure why the Nara wasn’t carrying him but it was possible they had been or become injured after coming to his rescue. Their teammates were probably scouting for more enemies.

Just as he was about to relax, a bolt of adrenaline, a warning of danger, shot through him. The heavy scent of blood and body fluids slammed into his face and he suppressed the automatic reflex to gag. Immediately, he disregarded his prior assumptions and reassessed the situation. Obviously, something had gone wrong. The last thing he remembered was getting knocked out by a mental attack of some sort. Had he been captured by a rouge? The only other conclusion was that a Nara and Yamanaka had turned traitor. In that case, they probably knew he was awake.

Aoba opened his eyes and leapt to his feet, knocking out the civilians in one easy strike, eyes moving frantically to search for either traitors. What he saw instead was a ritual seal, one he was just inside the edge of. His face blanched, and he immediately added everyone in the room as his enemies as he leaped away. His feet had barely cleared the boundary when it activated, casting a sinister light to his surroundings. The civilians he had knocked out screeched as their bodies were literally undone, piece by piece, their blood pouring into the grooves of the seal.

_ hello, little goddess. _

_ you have more followers than the last time you came. _

A shadow, shining with stars, detached from his and rose up to confront the thing inside the ritual seal.

“Jashin!” the shadow spat. “You won’t get past me,” the Nara promised darkly.

_ i have more followers than you, little goddess. _

The Nara ignored him and called, “Gelel!”, which didn’t match any Yamanaka’s name he knew.

Immediately, a bright glow came from various spots around the room as Aoba was shoved back and out of the building, landing outside, where he saw more monks and the rest of the Kumo ninja in a pile nearby. Aoba took one more look at the building, and resolutely made the executive decision to get out of the area, as clearly, the Nara knew what they were doing. Not even two minutes after he had started running, the earth shook as a loud explosion rumbled and Aoba was forced to take shelter behind a building, where behind him, an unholy screech of rage and an equally loud scream of determination sounded out.

Cautiously, Aoba peered out when nothing else happened after a few minutes. The building he had been in was gone. No trace of rubble, no ash, no blood, no bodies. Just gone. This was fine. Everything was fine. Nobody would believe him when he reported this. Once he figured out what had happened. Aoba wouldn’t believe it if someone told him what had just happened if he hadn’t experienced it.

Slowly, he made his way back, intent on finding some kind of evidence he could take back with him. Around him, the civilians started getting up, confusion in their eyes as they looked around. As he watched, a girl emerged from the literal air and smiled sheepishly when he noticed her.

“Who are you? What in the world just happened?” Aoba half demanded, half pleaded, desperate for answers, hoping he could take her back as a witness.

“I’m Shikako. And uh, it’s a bit of a long story. Tell you on the way back to Konoha?” she offered.

At least she was coming along willingly. “Sure, sounds great.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, uh, fun fact. Jashin is behind that barrier but don't worry, it can't get out. But it can still have some influence over some things, so it was a good thing he noticed the hiraishin before Jashin noticed him.


End file.
